Slashdot Mirror
2005 Foot In Mouth Awards
jollyroger1210 writes "Wired is running a story on the 2005 Foot In Mouth Awards." From the article: "Tech execs say the darndest things. And so do shuffling presidents, and disgraced scientists, and Wikipedia fakers. It's time to relive 2005's biggest spoken gaffes."
Sony's only on there once.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
"Mr. Negroponte has called it a $100 laptop -- I think a more realistic title should be 'the $100 gadget.'"
-- Intel chairman Craig Barrett
Who is getting the foot in the mouth here? Mr. Negroponte?
The human race is artificial intelligence created using object orientated programming.
Seriously, why is printing "f**k" so difficult? I'm from Europe and I really can't understand you Americans.
:). I guess you made a similar mistake as someone in America who would try to imagine Paris from the "Amelie" movie - it just depicts a nonexistent culture of a nonexistent city in a nonexistent country.
I'm from Europe too and I think I have an explanation. We tend to learn American English primary from American popular culture - movies, song lyrics, comics, video games etc. That's why we think that the f-word is so common in everyday usage of American English - we imagine this country as populated mostly by hip handsome mobsters, private detectives in trench coats, muscular tatooed Afroamerican cocaine dealers able to rhyme everything with "mothafucka", bespectacled mad computer geniuses etc. When I set my foot for the first time on LAX, the biggest surprise for me was that actually everyone I met seemed to be nice and gentle, totally unlike what I have imagined from "Grand Theft Auto" or "Blade Runner"
It's a mindset thing. Americans are taught from birth that it is wrong (and possibly sinful) to say certain words. My mother still cringes when I say 'fuck' and I've said it a LOT.
To me, it's just a word. Like 'blimey'. Nobody screams bloody murder when you say 'blimey', and yet it's used in the same way.
Or let's look at replacement words... 'Frack' and 'frell' are a couple scifi replacements for 'fuck'. They are extremely obvious what they are, and yet nobody cares if they are said.
There are even other, more obvious words... Shit and crap are EXACTLY the same thing. Why is one a 'cuss word' and the other merely another word for excrement?
This bothered me for a few years and I spent those years cursing like a sailor. With reasonable people, it made no difference at all. But lately, it's gotten boring and I've decided to try to keep it to a minimum, mainly for something to do while I'm speaking. (Speech is boring and can use a lot of livening-up.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Once upon a time a student writing a paper on Communism for a class on fascism and totalitarianism told his professor that he had been visited by agents of Homeland Security because he had placed a request for Chairman Mao's Little Red Book through the inter-library loan program.
y /12-05/12-17-05/a09lo650.htm
y /12-05/12-24-05/a01lo719.htm
Agents' visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior
http://www.southcoasttoday.com.nyud.net:8090/dail
There's just one little thing the student didn't count on...
Sometimes professors do not take things at face value, sometimes they actually do some research and they check things, they ask questions, and sometimes they notice inconsistencies.
They're smart like that. They really are. That's why professors are professors and why students are students, and why small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri are small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. But I digress...
Anyhow, to make a long story short, this student's professor asked some questions. This student's professor noticed some inconsistencies in the student's story. This student's professor asked the student's parents some questions. This student's professor found more inconsistencies in the student's story. This student's professor did even more checking.
In the end this student's professor found that not a single thing that the student had told him could be verified. The professor confronted his student who tearfully admitted that the story of being visited by agents of Homeland Security was a complete fabrication.
Federal agent's visit was a hoax
http://www.southcoasttoday.com.nyud.net:8090/dail
This student's cobbled up story which had caused news articles and editorials to be written, which had caused much heated discussion on the Internet, in the end was unravelled and shot to pieces because the student's professor had not taken it at face value and had asked questions until he got at the truth of the matter.
Now, you may ask, who put their foot in their mouth in this story? Well, I'll tell you. Many people on the discussion board where you now read this very post put their feet in their mouths by spewing intemperate comments as a result of uncritically accepting the statements of a liar as the truth. I'd say that's a pretty good foot in the mouth story and a pretty good cautionary tale as well.
We should put the media up for an award for their Katrina coverage. The Cat 4 huricane that was really a cat 3, the higher percentage of white people (over general population) who died versus black, the lack of mass murders in the shelters.... I could go on and on.
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.